Many children who are only mildly to moderately cerebral palsied enjoy success in a normal P.E. program until they reach approximately ten or eleven years of age at which point sports are apt to become far more competitive. A child with cerebral palsy may find it difficult and complicated to successfully compete. Even if a child cannot compete in sports, physical activity is always healthy. Adaptive P.E. offers a great deal of benefit to the child with cerebral palsy, providing advantageous physical activity and a simultaneous boost in self-esteem. If it’s offered, informal occupational and physical therapy, may be somthing you will want for your child. It may be provided for a cerebral palsied child while his peers are in regular P.E.

Mainstreaming your child, while it is a decision that is up to you, is not a decision that’s open to everyone. A child can, and some will argue should, be included in a regular school if she has cognitive and communicative abilities that are age-appropriate and will not need specialized medical care.

Some children with cerebral palsy exhibit behavioral trouble which may have been caused by isolation. Mainstreaming a child in order to expose the child to other non-disabled children can help to expand a child’s group of friends and provide a more “normalized” academic and social experience. Many feel that this is the single-best benefit of inclusion. Also, it can help to reduce the stigma towards disabled persons which is still present in many of our schools today. It may even reduce occurrences of harassment. When they are around people with disabilities, children without disabilities are able to formulate a more in-depth understanding of what it is like to have a disability.

In a perfect world, every school would have the necessary personnel and funding to provide the best of services to those in need of special education. This not being a perfect world, not all schools have an faculty with an education that includes more specialized training. This is probably the most profound disadvantage to inclusion – it is quite possible that the instructor who provides your child with her education has no special training. If your child has no severe motor difficulties, this could be less of a problem, but if she has any major communicative, cognitive, or motor limitations. It is possible that the teacher wouldn’t know how to handle the situation, especially if they had no prior experience in instructing disabled children.

One of the problems you may run into in mainstreaming your child is that your child may very well profit from specialized equipment that your "mainstream" school may lack. You and you child may encounter another potential downside to inclusion because it’s much cheaper for the state to mainstream a child rather than send the child to a special education facility. School officials may opt towards inclusion even if it’s not fully appropriate for your child. If you feel that this is the case, be sure to remind those in charge of the IDEA decision-making process. The IDEA entitles your child to a “free appropriate education” in the “least restrictive environment” possible. If the decision they reach about your child’s education is not accordance with these specification set out by IDEA, they are in violation of federal law.

Do not feel that the initial decision to include your child in regular schools is set in stone – it is a decision that must be reassessed as your child continues to grow and develop. The process of mainstreaming can be quite a gradual move. It may be that in your child’s early years, you decide that a special education facility with much experience and equipment will most benefit his growth. As the years pass, however, it become clear that he might benefit from inclusion, at which point your child might attend a half-day at both a special school and a regular school. Perhaps a while after that he might move into a fully mainstreamed curriculum.

Not every child will benefit from inclusion in a regular curriculum, and if you feel that this is the case with your child, you can choose to send him or her to a special education school. These schools were founded mainly in reaction to the pioneering piece of legislation known as IDEA, enacted in 1975, that promises children with disabilities the right to an education. Prior to the passing of IDEA, disabled children were often institutionalized, home-schooled, or the children attempted to manage attending a mainstream school.

Often, the special school that best fits a child’s needs is located at a great distance from their home and community. This has given rise to two of the most commonly heard arguments against special schools: lack of contact with the home and community, and a commute that is inconvenient to the child and his or her family.

Some argue that special education schools are not only essentially segregated education, but that they also may not provide your child with the education best suited for him or her. Grouping together children with many different kinds of disabilities in a single classroom makes it difficult to ensure that your child’s unique educational needs are being met. Many feel that because so many special education schools are located so far from the home and community, disabled persons might find it quite difficult to function in “the outside world” after having been in a special education facility until early adulthood. So many years of isolation may adversely affect his ability to integrate himself back into the community in which he will live and, if possible and appropriate, find employment.

Special education may be far from perfect, but it’s also far from all bad. Special education facilities are largely concentrated in terms of resources for your child – it can certainly be advantageous for a child to be able to receive education and therapy in the same location.

Probably the most essential of arguments in favor of special education is the expertise and equipment that can be found in special education facilities. Not only do special education instructors have the training needed to successfully educate a child with special needs, but they also have the necessary specialized teaching equipment that can be essential in the academic success of many disabled children.

Again, whatever you decide is best for your child may not be best for them forever. Make sure to continually re-examine the issue and assess the situation based on all aspects of your child’s growth and development.